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My good friend Shannon is getting married this coming weekend. She’s wearing my veil as her “something borrowed”. We cannot wait to celebrate with her and Ryan. They are such an amazing couple.

So I’ve been pondering what to wear to this wedding. I have my new implants and my old dresses don’t necessarily fit right anymore — so I rented the runway (if you don’t know what I’m talking about, check out http://www.renttherunway.com).

I’m a little worried about the dresses I rented because I’m still a little uneasy in my new body. Who knows if I picked the right sizes. I just can’t gauge what will look good with my new chest anymore (and it sucks that I just majorly indulged on vacation for two weeks and gained 6 pounds. Yup. You read that correctly. SIX POUNDS. Oink. Oink.)

So, I decided to pull a dress from my archives (read: out of our basement storage room) and try it on. It looks pretty good. If the rent the runway dresses don’t work out, I’ll go with my archival dress. BUT the one thing that bothers me beyond words — is the MAJOR scar that’s visible from my old port.

I’m so angry I have such a huge scar for a piece of shit port that I only had for three weeks total (10 days of which I was in the hospital because of the damn thing). Don’t get me wrong, I have plenty of scars on my new chest (all my mastectomy/reconstructive scars) — but nobody but Paul and my BAYS sisters have really seen those. It just sucks ass that my port scar is so prominent.

I know, I know, I should feel like a “warrior” because of my scars. But I’ll admit that, right now, I don’t. I feel deformed more than anything. I know how many other scars there are hiding under my clothes and it makes me sad for myself. I’ll admit it to you — I *do* feel sad for myself.

But, one must only indulge these feelings for a second because there is so much more to live for.

So, Shannon, Ryan, whatever I might end up wearing to your nuptials — who the F cares. Because we are going to eat, drink, and watch you be married!

Cheers to you fools!

Oh, PS, you best believe I’m sucking in my stomach as if my life depends on it in these pics 🙂 Just being honest with ya’ll…..

Like this:

I feel like I finally turned a corner this morning. I woke up and was in a little less pain and felt like my energy was on the uptick. I walked Lucy to her vet’s office and got her nails trimmed. It was a good walk/errand for both of us!

Another huge accomplishment today — I got out of my pajamas for the first time since Saturday! Yup, that’s right, I put on normal clothes and jewelry for my noon appointment with Garrett (small milestones people, small milestones).

It’s official — I am out of the woods wrt the Adria leak! yay! It might take another month or so for my arms to fully recover — but that’s just because my body is worn down from chemo, generally — so healing just takes longer than someone with a healthy immune system.

I can’t tell you how happy I was to hear the news. Everybody at Garrett’s office was really psyched too. It’s like one giant family over there — and everybody pulled together over the drama that was my leak!

End of day, we think my vein just gave out on me and that’s just something that can happen during chemo. A lot of bad things can happen during cancer and chemo — it’s just part of the bag-o-tricks. You can blow a vein, a vein can get necrotic, you can get neuropathy, mouth sores, lymphodema and/or your finger nails can fall out of their nail beds. In my case, my vein gave out during my second to last AC infusion. Shit happens. Also in my case, my gums are starting to ache and my finger nails are turning black — which leads me to believe that they may eventually fall out (gross). I spoke with Natalie, the nutritionist, about all of these new side effects and she made a few recommendations for me. Unfortunately, she said that these symptoms will likely only get worse once I start the “T” infusions. Good God.

I also had to have another nuelasta shot this afternoon. My white blood cell count was still really low. So, I have those body aches to look forward to starting tomorrow. Ugh.

I am going to go have a port put in later this week or early next week. We don’t want to chance any more vein issues for the last AC or any of the 12 “T” infusions I have left to go. While I’m not excited to add yet another scar to my body, I know it’s the right thing to do. At this point, we can’t put the blood pressure cuff on either one of my arms.

Garrett is trying to get me in with one of his buddies who is a whiz at placing ports here in the city in the next few days. Hopefully my insurance won’t make a big stink about it since I’m technically with PAMF and should probably have the port done through them.

In any event, that’s where we’re at. Even though I officially feel like a run-down, fatigued cancer patient. And as crappy as some of my new side effects are, I am overwhelmed with relief that all will be fine with my arms and veins. All in all, today is a good day. Whoot whoot!